


Crowning Moments

by OnAWhim



Series: Avengers By Association [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It of Sorts, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-16 01:50:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14802072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnAWhim/pseuds/OnAWhim
Summary: Infinity War Spoilers.......What was really going on when Loki 'died'? What plans does the trickster have to stop Thanos before it's too late... if it's not already too late...





	1. Flight to Fight

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of a collection of stories which will be interwoven in sequels, but they should also read okay as stand alone works if that’s what you’re looking for. There are four stories in the first stage of this series, so I highly encourage you to check out the rest. :) 
> 
> This is my first time trying to write something like this, so I welcome any and all feedback. Also, comments make my day, so drop a line.

He hoped Thor had understood. Yes, Thanos had come for the Tesseract. But Thanos had also come for him. He would not rest until he got the space gem, but Loki doubted whether the Titan would postpone his plans for him. If he did, well, he could not run forever, but at the very least he could delay the mad titan for a while longer. 

If Thanos did not chase after him, though, that left him free to plot and scheme. He would not sit idly by while Thanos defeated the Avengers. His ultimate victory would mean Loki’s ultimate demise. 

He wasn’t sure exactly where to go, so he had chosen Jotunheim. It was a realm he knew fairly well and even if he was not welcome there, he could blend in without expending his own magical reserves. 

He knew the other Asgardian refugees were out there somewhere, too. He could find them, but there would be too many questions he could not answer, especially about Thor’s fate. He doubted they would be happy to accept his leadership after all that had happened. Besides, he needed freedom if he was to find a way to defeat Thanos before he wreaked havoc on the universe. 

So he flew onward in the small escape ship. It was quiet. Space always was.

He slept a little, but his thoughts kept turning to his brother. He couldn’t tell if Thor had understood what he was doing. He tried to call his attention to his deceit with the bit about the sun shining upon them again. He had said so many things that were arguably true, but also arguably false: Prince of Asgard, Odin-son, rightful king of Jotunheim.

He had feared Thanos might have caught his meaning when he questioned his use of the word “undying.” But no, he was just being witty about killing the Loki before him. He was rather proud of his wordplay. After all, an undying fidelity was exactly what he’d left behind. Somehow, he doubted Thanos had looked up third definitions in a Midguardian dictionary recently. He only could hope some of Thor’s compatriots had and would clue the oaf in when he no doubt relayed Loki’s final words. It would be a pity if no one realized how clever he’d been. 

He sighed again. He would have liked to have thought of a way to take Thanos out on the ship. He just had to trust- no all he could do was hope- that Thor could take care of himself. 

He needed to find a Way that he could pass through to another realm. From there he could hopefully track down a Way that led to Jotunheim. Flying there in a ship would be awfully inefficient. If he followed enough wormholes, he’d end up back on Sakaar. With any luck, he could use the assortment of wormholes there to find his way back to the Nine Realms, where it would be a quick trip to Jotunheim. 

The first wormhole was coming up shortly. As the ship plummeted into its depths, Loki felt his ears popping, a strange side effect of transdimensional travel. Oh well. He tried to figure out his new surroundings. It was dark. Only the dimmest of nebulae in the distance casting a dim brown glow on one distant horizon. He must be in an interstellar gas cloud in the far reaches of space. He flew towards the faint brown glow and looked for another wormhole. 

As he approached the swirling, hot gas that was clustering in to a ball, destined to become a planet or brown dwarf, he detected another worm hole a lightyear or so along the azimuth. He made his way towards it. This Way was longer. The oppressive darkness shrouded him for several minutes. It was uncomfortable. It brought back too many feelings that reminded him of the Way he had fallen through after the Bifrost. 

This next way deposited him in a forest. He saw the pointed terraces of stone in the distance and a massive ice sheet covering most of the valley adjacent to the forest. To verify his suspicion, he looked up at the sky. Along with a bluish sun, an irregular moonlet eclipsed a red dwarf. He was in luck. Although he had never visited, he had read about the realm Zaxland, home of the Snootches. It was known for it’s distinctive landscape, perpetual eclipse, and the critical yet furry inhabitants which were barely sentient. But, in smaller circles, it was known that the base of the ice sheet hid a Way to another icy realm: Jotunheim. 

The ship was no use anymore. It was stuck between trees. And Loki didn’t know the area well enough to risk teleporting, so he began the trek through the slopes of the valley to the ice sheet. 

He wouldn’t have expected to marvel at the ice sheet’s height, but it truly was remarkable. Tunneling under all that weight would be no easy feat. Luckily, he had his magic. He began the slow, careful work of navigating the subglacial streams. He was almost going to return to the valley to rest and recharge his magic when he came upon something curious. A moulin in the ice sheet had created a great waterfall from the ice sheet’s surface to the floor. But unlike the other such falls he’d encountered in his wandering, the deafening rush of water was not underscored by the impact of water on rock. It had to be going somewhere.

He paused to collect himself and his magic, then jumped into the rushing water and fell and fell and fell…


	2. Taking Advantage of the Unexpected

Suddenly, he was not falling, but flying. The air was cooler and the diffuse spray of water froze into a maelstrom of icy pebbles cascading up through a crack in the icy surface of Jotunheim and pelting the snowy surface as they plummeted from the sky. Loki was also launched upwards and always tumbled into the snow bank, which was really more ice than snow. 

Dusting himself off, he let his guise fade into his Jotun skin. It felt at once comfortable and unnerving. He was not used to his natural form. He saw a slight rise in the topography a little ways away so he walked in that direction. He was clearly in the outerregions, near the geyser fields. It was a part of Jotunheim which was sparsely populated, but close enough to the center city not to be considered wilderness. Long, long ago, the geysers had been an attraction for wealthy Jotun in the city to visit. That time had passed Jotunheim eons ago. 

From the small hill, he could make out a dim light in a cave. It was as good a place to begin as any. He walked to the entrance and announced his presence. A small Jotun boy- if any Jotun could properly be called small- answered. He looked surprised. Well, Loki was actually small for a frost giant, so he supposed him being out in this part of Jotunheim would be surprising. 

“Why have you come?” the boy asked. 

“I am seeking shelter and knowledge of the city.” Loki said. It would be a start. 

“No one knows what has transpired.” The boy answered, ushing Loki into the cave where the boy’s mother sat. 

That piqued his interest. He wondered what exactly was going on in the usually dull political scene of Jotunheim to elicit such an answer. “What do you mean?”

“My father, Momirson, is gone. Others have disappeared from the city.” The boy answered with just a hint of grief coloring his tone. 

Loki paused. He had known Thanos intended to destroy half the universe, but he surely could not have succeeded so quickly. The Avengers were no trivial enemy and the soul stone had not been seen in the written memory of the Nine Realms. It shouldn’t have been been possible. “What do you mean by ‘dissapear’?”

“He turned to ash.” 

So maybe he’d been traversing the universe more slowly than he’d guessed. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday.”

Loki decided to take the chair he’d been offered. Thanos had succeeded- and quickly. Far more quickly than Loki had anticipated. Midgard was no doubt in complete and utter disarray. The Avengers had surely been killed in the fight against Thanos or, if not, mostly scattered to ashes. It was fortunate he had not met that same fate. If Thor had somehow survived the initial attack from Thanos on the ship, odds were that he had perished since then. For some reason he could not explain, he doubt he and his brother belonged to the same half of the universe. 

The boy looked at Loki expectantly. 

With a bit of magic behind his back, Loki produced some Jotun currency. He handed it over. “Here,” he said, “take this in exchange for your hospitality.” It was a hefty sum, but not so much as to arouse undue suspicion. 

The boy showed Loki to a room. For the first time in a while, Loki slept.

The next morning, after he awoke, Loki was prepared to get more answers. Although his hopes to defeat Thanos before he attained the full power of the gauntlet had been dashed, he still wanted to destroy the titan. He told himself it wasn’t to avenge half the universe. He told himself it was merely out of self-interest. After all, Thanos might grow bored with his victory soon and return to make sure Loki had perished, perhaps.

He asked the Jotun boy and his mother questions about when exactly the disappearing had happened and what was being done in the city. He learned that not much was known. It was to be expected of a realm with little infrastructure. 

But then the mother brought up a rumor that explained the lack of governing even better. It was whispered that both of Laufey’s sons had vanished. 

Loki concealed the thrill of excitement he felt at the prospect of truly being the only rightful heir to the Jotun throne, even if no one knew. In a way, it was everything he had ever wanted. In another way, it was what he had always despised. Still, he had to admit to himself that, if this rumor were true, it would offer incredible opportunity. 

His mind was racing with all he could do to launch a successful coup of whatever interim leadership had been established. He would need to get to the city, for one thing, and learn enough about whoever was there to ensure they never returned. He would also need to observe to find out what the people wanted from their new king. Once he was established, he could have the might of the entire Jotun realm behind whatever plot he concocted next. It would certainly be a considerable challenge to rule smoothly on a realm so used to corruption and political instability, but Loki figured that if anyone could change that, it was probably him. Times of distress were always good for changes in leadership and Thanos had presented the perfect chaos for Loki to exploit.


	3. Power Vacuums Suck

Loki did not need the cover of night to sneak about the palace, if such a worn down ice complex could be called a palace. But it had taken most of the day to eavesdrop on a multitude of conversations that put together a proper picture of what was really going on in Jotunheim. 

Invisibly, he simply walked down the hallway to a room just off to the side of the main throne room. Inside, bent over a decree, were two frost giants. He recognized them from meetings he’d observed invisibly throughout the day. Stroomi was the leaner of the two and was writing down what Mukha was saying. Mukha was the eldest of one of the more powerful families in the court of Jotunheim. Apparently, after the last two remaining members of the royal family had perished, Mukha had seized control, despite only being what was a glorified enforcer for the crown. Stroomi was the crown’s scribe and had served since the middle of Laufey’s rule. 

Still invisible, Loki leaned over their should to read Mukha’s new decree. It was about stockpiling resources at the palace. Foolish, thought Loki. In times as uncertain as these, the Jotunn would not take kindly to the crown trying to snatch their food. Winter was over, but food was still scarce on the frigid world. 

Gracefully, Loki drew a dagger, letting it become visible just before it slice through Mukha’s throat. 

Loki was standing behind Mukha, so he did not see the briefest look of surprise on the frost giant’s face before Mukha tumbled forward onto the table on which his decree was being written. 

With the slightest shimmer, Loki materialized and spoke to Stroomi, “I would advise you not to shout.”

“Loki Laufeyson.” Stroomi set down his pen and took a step back towards the door.

“You’ll find that door locked, I’m afraid.” Loki smiled. “Let’s have a conversation about your employment.”

Through Stroomi stood much taller than Loki, he cowered. “Of course, Your Highness.”

With a grin, Loki replied, “Now that’s more like it.” 

Now, the real fun could begin.

~~~~~~~~~

The horns sounded that called the Jotunn people to the palace courtyard. Inside an upper room, Loki adorned the garb worn by the king. Looking in a roughly polished mirror, he could not help grimace in distaste. This was Laufey’s cloak. Earlier, Stroomi had remarked that his sigils were so similar to the late Laufey’s that he bore a passing resemblance to a younger Laufey. 

He may dislike that fact, but it would play to his advantage now. He had never wanted to be king of this realm. Even though he saw things differently than he had before Thor’s coronation so long ago, he was still uncomfortable in his Jotunn form. Some things were not easily shaken. 

He removed Laufey’s crown from its drawer. Mukha might have wanted to seize power, but he had not been crazy enough to assume the mantle of king. Well, Loki had often been called crazy and he assumed today would be no exception. The crown was too large, so he used his seidr to fit it to his head.

Some time had passed and most of the people of Jotunheim had assembled in the courtyard. It was the first time the horns had been blown since Thanos had destroyed half of everything. 

Stepping out onto the balcony into what passed for daylight on this dark, cold realm, Loki raised his arms and spoke, “Jotunheim, your savior is here!”

He usually wasn’t one to reuse his old lines, but when something worked, it worked. Besides, it had a nice ring to it.

“I am Loki, son of Laufey, rightful heir to the throne of Jotunheim. My brothers have perished in the great malice visited upon this realm by the mad titan, Thanos.”

He paused for effect, but not too long where someone in the crowd might speak out. He sighed quietly. Calling the sons of Laufey his brothers pained him and caused his mind to wander towards his true brother, wherever Thor might be now. If he was alive at all. Taking a deep breath, he prepared to continue his oration.

“I killed Mukha, the traitor who sought to use this desolation to his own advantage. I have escaped the clutches of Thanos twice. I begot Ragnarok, the resurrection of Surtur, who razed Asgard to oblivion and killed the Allfather’s first born.”

There were cheers. Despite misgivings about their lost prince, the hatred betwixt Asgard and Jotunheim was great and Loki’s heart grieved inwardly at their joy in the destruction of his home realm. 

“I have brought you all this and something which you desire even now: vengeance. You have lost two of your princes, mothers, daughters, sons, fathers, and friends. You had no time to say goodbyes and no way to know it was coming. My people, I offer you the chance to fight back!”

His shout was joined by many, many others. Loki feared for a moment that the roar of the crowd would compromise the construction of the ice palace. 

“Go forth to your homes. Gather your supplies. Smelt your weapons. Heed the decrees that shall come forth. We prepare for glorious battle.”

There was more cheering. The Jotunn liked their wars. 

With a swish of his cloak, Loki turned and went inside. There was much to do if his coup was to be as successful as he hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in posting- work has been very crazy. 
> 
> Additional apologies for the chapter title pun :P
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! Leave a comment for me to read on my lunch break! :)


End file.
